A 26-year-old Little Rock man has accepted a six-year prison sentence for shooting a man who later died.
Cornelius Henry Pittman pleaded guilty last week to second-degree battery and being a felon in possession of a firearm in the June 2013 shooting of 39-year-old Lawrence Thomas. He died a little more than two weeks later in July 2013.
Little Rock police found Thomas with three bullet wounds to his right knee near West 12th and Woodrow streets. He told officers he'd given a ride to a man near West 13th and Peyton streets but had been shot when the man pulled a gun and they had struggled over the weapon.
Thomas was treated and released at a local hospital, police said. But he later returned to the facility with complications and died the following day.
Little Rock police arrested Pittman in Chicago in June 2014, almost a year to the day of the shooting.
Pittman had been charged with manslaughter, but authorities were forced to drop that charge because medical evidence failed to conclusively link his death to his gunshot wounds, deputy prosecutor Erica Fitzhugh said Monday.
Represented by defense attorney Bill Luppen, Pittman accepted the six-year term at a June 16 hearing before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims. His prison sentence will be followed by a four-year suspended sentence.
Court records show that Pittman pleaded guilty in November 2011 to misdemeanor counts of third-degree battery, fleeing and resisting arrest for punching a Little Rock police officer, Michael Sing, who had stopped him in May 2011 on a traffic violation. The battery charge was reduced from a felony in exchange for his guilty plea, and he was sentenced to one year on probation.
At the time of the shooting, Pittman was on probation for a November 2012 conviction for felony fleeing and misdemeanor marijuana possession. His co-defendant in that case, Jerard Ele Ball, 21, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for theft of property by force.
Prosecutors dropped aggravated robbery and kidnapping charges against the men that stemmed from allegations they had robbed a food delivery man, Paul Brown, at gunpoint in April 2012, then forced him to withdraw money at two banks.
In May, Ball was sentenced to 20 years in prison for first-degree murder for participating with another man in the October 2012 slaying in Little Rock of 27-year-old Charles Hall Jr. of Star City. Prosecutors said Ball fired the fatal shot in the killing.
Metro on 06/23/2015